Your Help is Needed.

To all of our Women’s netWork friends:

It’s been just over one year since the Women’s netWork began in Manistee County. It’s a great time to CELEBRATE!
* We have monthly networking luncheons - -with as many as 147 participants. We meet the third Thursday of each month and have delicious food along with great speakers ranging from a Michigan Supreme Court Justice to a Laugh Therapist
* We have an information-filled blog. Check it out at http://womensnetwork.blogspot.com You can find our entire history on the blog.
* We have entered the world of philanthropy by establishing the Women’s Empowerment Giving Circle Endowment at the Manistee County Community Foundation.
* We engaged in our first career-mentoring experience in Spring 2006 with mentors in the area of architecture and politics.
* With donations from area women, there is now a large Women’s netWork section of books at the Manistee County Library with titles of interest in the professional development and leadership of women.
* There are over 400 women on the Women’s netWork email list encouraging networking among women and providing resources to each other.

As we look forward to our second year, we need your help!

We are ready to become an official not-for-profit 501( c) 3 organization, and we will need your help in creating articles of incorporations, by-laws, policies and procedures.

In Fall 2006, we will be receiving a grant from the Little River Casino Resort Charity Golf Outing that will allow us to offer our very first career-based scholarships through the Women’s Empowerment Giving Circle. We will need your help in creating a process for administering the scholarship program.

We are revamping the mentoring program and we will need an advisory board. We will need to develop a strategy for selecting and screening mentors and students.

A fund development strategy needs to be created to cultivate the Giving Circle to be able to maintain scholarship programs, speakers series, mentoring opportunities and more.
Are you web-site savvy? We need YOU!!!

These ideas and more will be explored in a brainstorming session at our August 17, 2006 luncheon at the Tuscan Grille in downtown Manistee. We need your expertise, your professional experience and your enthusiasm to move the Women’s netWork to the next level.
Please plan to attend the August 17 luncheon and be sure to bring YOUR ideas. This is about YOU. How do YOU want to move this organization? We have a great thing going. We need YOU to keep it moving forward. Be sure to be prepared to sign up for an area to lend your expertise.
Please e-mail manisteewomen@yahoo.com with your thoughts and ideas…let us know how you can help.

We’ll see you at the July, 20th luncheon at the Tuscan Grille featuring guest speaker Cindy Novak and we look forward to your ideas and suggestions.